Most drug offenders don't live in projects

Posted: Thursday, January 01, 2004

I am writing in response to the Dec. 23 letter from an evidently privileged individual suggesting the Athens Housing Authority should drug test all of its tenants.

The truth of the matter is most of the drug offenses that occur in ''housing projects'' are not committed by the people who actually live here. Most of us are either disabled or elderly. Those of us who are young and have children are actually working at jobs that do not pay us enough to cover rent and or utilities at an ''average'' apartment complex here in Athens. Perhaps the letter writer has never known a ''poor'' person. But the stereotype of a supposedly drug-addicted, shiftless and lazy tenant is outdated and completely lacking in veracity. It saddens me there is still such a stigma attached to public housing.

My neighbors are doing the best they can with the hand they've been dealt, and without the approximately 1,200 units of housing the authority provides would be homeless. We pay our rent, we love our kids, we do what we can for each other, just as neighbors do in any other neighborhood.

Poor people are not genetically engineered for laziness. We are not stupid, and we manage our money incredibly well. We have to, because when we pay our bills there is nothing left to live on for three weeks out of the month. Poverty is not a crime! Illness and disability are not character traits!

I dare the lady who wrote that letter to run the gauntlet of drug dealers that use my apartment complex for their business on every single temperate evening. The drug dealers don't live here; they are coming here to sell drugs to other idiots who assume housing projects are some sort of convenience store for illegal drug users. Wake up and smell the coffee, lady, and may you never be ill or vulnerable, because you wouldn't make it three days in my neighborhood. We don't like mean people here.